 Aloha and welcome to this special episode of figments on reality. I'm your host Dan leaf and go by fig 33 years in the Air Force a long time in national security matters, and that's why I'm so interested in this topic I hope you are too because today's special episode is part two of a discussion of The failure in Afghanistan the many facets of it and especially the situation during the withdrawal It is as always going to be an non political Discussion because I don't think it helps and I'll try to avoid vitriol blame round, but it crosses party lines And the political capital or one or other side should not be a consideration in this critical time that's so consequential to us that which we should all be concerned and frankly when I Watched news stories about the trivial stuff that gets into the news these days. It just It makes me mad and the public in the government need to put politics aside at this time because it matters greatly for our country and for the world and in the closing. I'll talk about exactly Why that is the many of you know that today there was a deadly attack the Kabul aircraft airport. Near the abbey gate as it's called at last report 12 US Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed in this attack 10s, maybe hundreds of Afghans as well. It seems a video I imagine that many of you have as well. And it's just horrific. I cannot Imagine the final seconds of our 1213 service members. The last 12 or the last seconds of their lives or the coming days, weeks and months for their families and Let's honor them by thinking deeply about this and trying to find ways to do better in the immediate and long term future. Clearly we have lost the initiative in Afghanistan and we must take it back and not we the president, not we the military, not we one party or the other. The big way it's in everybody's interest to go forward and make the best of a very bad situation. We owe that to our country. We also owe it to the many Afghans who supported us in our even loosely aligned with US efforts there because they're deeply at risk today. I exchange changed messages with a an Afghan friends of mine. Good guy. Who is hiding because he supported us efforts there for well over a decade. And he sent me documents that he hoped would facilitate him getting through the gates at the airport and getting out of Afghanistan. And he's not a quitter. He's just at great risk. He said to me when he sent these as pictures via message. He said, if they see these pictures, they being the Taliban. They direct hanging me. In other words, if the Taliban sees that he's even communicating with the US, he believes he'll be dead. And I've heard from other friends similar stories and we have a moral obligation to these people to try to save them. We can't save all of them. But every Afghan who's at risk because of their support of the United States that can get out can be gotten out. We should do that and we should take risk as we did today to do so. Now there's a great risk that there'll be infiltrators, terrorists, bad guys in those who escape. We have to take that risk and counter it appropriately. There is no perfect situation here, but we put them at risk by being in their country and by asking their help, which they gave and we owe them a chance to survive and really to thrive. So as I look at this withdrawal and most of the terms that I would use to describe it are quite impolite, so I'll just say it's a disaster. I have to make assumptions as I look at this and the assumptions are that, first of all, it probably could not have been done worse. I mean, really, if you look at it, I've got a couple pictures here from the early rays of the chaotic withdrawal of the images now. I mean, this is already chaos, especially the picture on the right. And they come from our Department of Defense, but the, I haven't had direct involvement in it, so let me make some assumptions for how this happened. And the first thing I want to address is what the question is and the question is not whether or not we should, whether or not it's a political failure, it's everybody's failure. Everybody's failure, the intelligence community, the elected leaders in charge and the military. It's a total failure of the US National Security Committee. And to try to shift blame is really a terrible thing and we ought not do it. So let's not let's ask what happened here and I think there's a meme going on that going around that I modified and took the politics out of. And it talks about what common sense would have dictated in terms of the withdrawal and what was actually done. And, you know, I've been involved in a couple of conflicts and a lot of planning and operations execution and those items on the left are so obvious to me it's stunning that we didn't at least come close to that. First of all, don't let your enemy and I'll talk more about setting a calendar deadline. Don't let your enemy have ultimate flexibility by going in the best season for them. So winter would have been a fine time to initiate the withdrawal. You've got to maintain support to the, the Afghan forces intelligence and their support so that they have some hope of succeeding in their efforts to maintain viability and of the government to stay in power. And then the one that really startles me is the failure to execute a non combatant evacuation order. Non combat operations plan, and Neo is required, I think in every US embassy certainly any that I've been associated in case things turn bad, you have to be prepared to evacuate non combatants. And as far as I can tell in the planning for this withdrawal. That was never conceded or executed. Next, we, we know, we knew we were leading a lot of valuable and a capable military equipment in the hands of the Afghan National Army. We also knew that that some of that could fall into the hands of the enemy. Why we weren't prepared to disable it and destroy it if necessary. I absolutely don't know. I simply do not know where that failure occurred it's unimaginable to me. It's truly unimaginable. The, the failure to be prepared for worst case is anti the ethical so uncharacteristic of the US military I served in. I just can't explain it. We should have proceeded with our withdrawal in the right order with the military last, because, as we proved by having to get forces back in. Getting military out first is backwards. And then the airfield operations there's much debate now President Biden in his remarks today said the military suggested that the background airfield was not a much utility. Okay, I'm not sure I agree with that assessment but more airfields are better. Airfield operations in any case should have been protected and maintained to the finish, and instead we left precipitously and didn't maintain that that capability and have had to reestablish what operational capability and what security. We could for the airfield in Kabul. You know, you, you see my assessment as excerpt as listed over there, the set withdrawal as executed we told the Taliban what we're going to do. We terminated Bagram, right or wrong, apparently wrong I'd say we terminated our support to the Afghan National Army and they collapsed. We withdrew the US military now with right, we're reacting to every, everything since we had to put forces back in we're trying to search for locate and facilitate the withdrawal of Americans and at risk Afghans. And furthermore, we're going to have to respond to a better equipped Taliban, and the potential for genocide and atrocities on their part, and a resurgence of terrorism. The Biden administration is saying that this attack today in Kabul was done by ISIS K. This is won't be the last we hear that threat, because of the failed withdrawal. Why did this happen. First of all, I think some people with I, in my first episode I spoke about hubris. And it's a word that fits, frankly, I'll let you read that and not talk about it much but I think, because we thought we could, we thought we could get away with it. And clearly, we were wrong. But there must have been bad assumptions. In the national security community be there, be they military or civilian must have given bad advice. And we were in a hurry because we'd imposed calendar constraints on on ourselves, a self inflicted wound calendar constraints. And maybe we just hoped it would go okay. Hope as the military cliche goes is not a plan. We may not have anticipated the precipitous collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan National Army but we should have in worst case planning and simply based on decades of experience there that's a fragile country that some argue isn't even a country and doesn't have the fabric to be a country. And it's not no disrespect for Afghans. It's just, it's a very difficult environment to govern or to protect. But the fundamental failure in my mind was the calendar based withdrawal on any date and yes, the Trump administration for initiating that idea. The administration for continuing their responsibility the president today talked again about what he inherited. I don't care. He is the president and again this is not a political statement but a calendar based operation is flawed you, you give up all surprise because you tell the enemy and I don't know if the administration views them as is the enemy but they certainly know that the Taliban is not are not friends and so stated today in both his briefing and in the press secretary's briefing. Why would we want to telegraph a date certain for the withdrawal. It's, it does not make military sense. I don't think it makes strategic sense either. The other thing you do, by the way, when you state a date certain is you constrain everything you do and deny yourself the ability to react to changes in the environment or the situation. Your conditions should be what determine when you withdraw the conditions can be going through the steps of that common sense withdrawal that I discussed, making sure that you have a neo plan non combat and evacuation plan in place that you are ready to deal with potential loss of valuable military equipment that you have security and have prepared for that security of airfields and are well prepared and situated for evacuation operations which anybody should have been able to look at and say this will require some significant evacuation, no matter what, because even if the entire country had not fallen to the Taliban. There was going to be some displacement as as the Taliban moved in into the void that required some evacuation. So, this wasn't done. And what do we do now is the next question and that's where I'd like us to focus down on the assessment of blame because that's not very productive. And what do we do with this current situation to make it less bad. The first is, we ought not as I said in part one of this, we ought not seek success in the withdrawal and the evacuation. That situation. The military has done an incredible job with our NATO NATO partners of getting a vast number of us and other people out of Afghanistan. It's a gargantuan effort, very well executed in extraordinarily difficult situations. It's not something to celebrate. We did it because of an initial failure. So, so acknowledge the contribution of the people who've executed the evacuation operations but don't make it the focus of the discussion. Today after the attack there was a lot of discussion by both the President and his press secretary about avenging the attack on on our Marines and the Navy corpsman and the Afghan civilians don't forget. We need to respond. We need to respond as a matter of deterrence not punishment to deter future attacks and impose some cost and to validate the sacrifice of our service members. But we ought not do it for the bitter taste of revenge. And we ought not do it to claim success in something needs to be done, but it's not a not an immediate priority in it ought not be something to say, Hey, look, you know we got them while they got us first, we need to deter future attacks, protect the current operation and finish the job. We're going to have to communicate with the Taliban the President has acknowledged that. And we need to do that because there are reality we can't wish for an alternate reality in Afghanistan where the Taliban aren't in power aren't running what security there is there. And we ought to coordinate with them as only only as necessary and absolutely not negotiate the time for negotiation is done. Now they hold some cards. So when we asked why we're talking to Taliban. Why that was a factor in sticking to the current August 31 deadline. I don't know but I would speculate that Taliban threats to exact a cost on civilians and remaining us personnel. If we extended the deadline might be part of that. Okay, we have to deal with that reality. But not by negotiating. So we can't wish away the Taliban as I said, and we need to acknowledge the reality that they're currently in power and we have some work to do. And let me talk about that work to do and about the next steps that should come. The first and most important thing needs to be to use a skill that seems to be lost in our country, and that's admit mistakes. Okay, this has gone very, very badly. So there were mistakes. We need our leaders, civilian and military to acknowledge them and not try to turn them into successes or to explain them by blaming them on others and I mean both sides of the aisle. Everybody here as a part of everybody in the national security community on any side of the aisle, whether they're in power now or in the past has responsibility so own up to it. There's a very good article by General Ben Hodges, Army General, I didn't know General Hodges but he talked about his role in Afghanistan and and admitted mistakes, it was refreshing. It's very much needed. We, the poll numbers don't matter. It's not an election year. And this matter is far more important than how the poll numbers look so please admit your mistakes. Again, as much as possible we need to re seize the initiative and that coming through Matt comes through mandating not negotiating conditions to the maximum extent possible we can undo some of the mistakes that have been made. And by completing the evacuation, no matter how long it takes and I'm not sure if we're totally stuck with the 31 August deadline but that line notwithstanding, however we do it, notwithstanding, we need to complete the evacuation. The administrative administration is committed to that with regard to us persons who want to leave. We should be broader in our consideration of what completing the evacuation means. We should commit to save all Afghans. All special immigrant visa applicants should be welcomed to the United States, not approved, but applicants. There's an excellent article by Joan Barker in the military times on on the responsibility for both sides regarding special immigrant visa applicants and the blame, frankly. Those are people who applied to come to the United States and due to some restrictions placed upon it by the Trump administration. And in action, perhaps on the Biden administration didn't have their visas granted. If they applied, we should bring them to the United States or a third country and sort it out. We can't wait for them because they won't survive. We need to constrain the Taliban in every way possible. They, as President Biden said today, have interests and we should affect those interests and we have the means to do it. Their interests include staying in power. Okay, we can put their staying in power at risk without launching another war. They include money, the economy that they need to function. And most importantly, there's the US military equipment that they have. And I hope, I don't know, not in government or military service anymore. I hope that there's planning for a massive campaign from the air to destroy the remaining US military equipment, the and the Afghan National Army has ceased to exist. So nothing good is going to come from the ground equipment, the small arms the weapons, or the aircraft that remain there. We have the capability to go in and systematically destroy it. There would be some risk, especially if the Taliban were notified ahead of time that we're going to do that. So, anybody in the National Security Apparatus is listening I hope they quickly put this into a deeply classified planning process. But either as a preemptive effort or in response to Taliban bad behavior, all of that stuff to the maximum degree possible should go away. We can do that. Frankly, I'm not sure why it hasn't started already again perhaps because we were necessarily dependent on Taliban facilitation of the evacuation operations. We have to commit to save all the Afghans who are at risk because of their association with us. Remember what my friend said, if they saw the pictures he sent which were, you know, passport, passport photos, letters of appreciation from the US side for what he had done. He'd be killed. There are tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan at similar risk. We need to find a way to do everything we can and one of the ways to do that is to establish a point of contact in the US government for people like me to reach out and say here's a name for you. Here's somebody who needs to be helped here's somebody hiding in his closet or basement or her closet or basement, and because I've had several people reach out with the same desperation for people they've been associated with. I hope on my next figments the power of imagination to speak to the retired US soldier who's deeply concerned about the Afghans who facilitated not just his mission but his survival on 15 deployments to Afghanistan, not long enough 15 years but 15 trips to Afghanistan. He's heart sick about the fate of these people. It won't take much. Once the US is truly gone. And once this fades for the headlines for an Afghan to be summarily killed murdered torture by the Taliban because they have some connection with the, with the US efforts there. So we should establish a point of contact I should be able to pick up the phone or send an email to Afghan refugees at whatever.gov government effort, and they need to put the manpower person power and resources to making this part of the effort to get it right in the end. So I always close with what would fig do here's what I'd ask you to do is shed your politics they don't matter. This is too important. And there'll be plenty of time for blaming you can blame people at the ballot box. But for the 13 dead today for all of the dead Afghans, those at risk, and for the lives that were lost in preceding 20 years politics don't matter. It's hugely important and it might seem kind of remote Afghanistan's a long way away maybe you didn't know anybody who served. But this is how we recover from the initial failure of the withdrawal is going to have significant influence on the US role in the world. I've been off said here in the Pacific, that while China is the preferred economic partner, often by necessity of many countries, the US is always the preferred security partner. First of all, because we're generally ethical, we're usually competent, and we generally stay committed. Okay, we're failed the last two so far, we have to recover from that failure. We're forced for good when we act as America should. And now it's time apolitically to act as America should and finish this job, as well as we can. So, thank God bless the souls of our servicemen and of the Afghans who are lost today and comfort their families. It's terrible time and may we pull together to get it as right as we can. Thank you for watching this episode of figments on reality. I'll be back Monday with another figments on reality on military accountability that talks to who should be held accountable and how you do that in the US military. And how you do that, how it works and why it needs to be done. I'd like to thank figment fig or sorry, think tech Hawaii for letting me present my views as a citizen journalist and urge you to support this great nonprofit organization that gives many of us voice and things we care about. Thank you for watching this episode of figments on reality.